Legal Expert Looks Ahead To Second Creato Murder Trial

CAMDEN, N.J. (CBS) — Prosecutors have vowed to re-try David Creato, the Haddon Township man charged with the murder of his 3-year-old son in October 2015, after a jury could not agree on a verdict.

But one South Jersey legal expert isn’t so sure that’ll happen.

Rutgers-Camden law professor J.C. Lore suggests the fact there’s no direct evidence linking Creato to the death of Brendan, paired with three autopsies failing to establish an exact cause of death, makes this a difficult case. There’s also the time, effort and cost of a retrial to consider.

That’s why he thinks a plea bargain is not necessarily out of the question.

“The one thing that a trial does for both the defense and the prosecution is it makes both sides aware of truly how strong and how weak their case is,” Lore told KYW Newsradio. “So people are sometimes more likely to negotiate a plea now that they’ve seen the case play out fully in court.”

He believes prosecutors might give a second jury more choices besides murder and child endangerment. And those choices could be the basis for plea negotiations.

“They’ve now gone through a trial, had trouble getting the conviction on the murder charge. I think it’s absolutely a possibility that they’ll both include some of these lesser included charges,” Lore added, “And it is likely that they’ll also negotiate with the defendant to a possible plea on the lesser included charges.”